FRISCO, Texas — The latest development in the world of Big 12 football is not a development in the standard sense. It’s a pause.
The conference is waiting for the College Football Playoff’s future format to be determined before plowing forward with several strategic initiatives. Within that group of chess moves: the fate of non-conference schedules into the 2030s.
Big 12 schools have dozens of matchups with Big Ten and SEC opponents under contract over the next eight years, but many of the showdowns could be in jeopardy.
“We should have clarity in a few months,” Arizona State athletic director Graham Rossini told the Hotline last week at Big 12 football media days. “A lot depends on what the SEC does.”
Check that: Everything depends on what the SEC does, from the CFP model for 2026 and beyond to the Big 12 non-conference schedules.
Specifically, everything depends on what the SEC does with its conference schedule. Will it continue to play eight games or add a ninth to equal the number played by the Big Ten and Big 12?
Let’s step back and connect the dots in a sport that is increasingly interwoven.
— The Big Ten and SEC control the playoff format for the next contract cycle, from 2026-31.
— The Big Ten favors a 16-team model with 13 automatic qualifiers and three at-large teams — the so-called 4-4-2-2-1 approach in which the Big 12 and ACC would receive half as many bids (two) as the Big Ten and SEC (four).
— The SEC favors a 16-model in which the five highest-ranked conference champions would receive automatic bids, with the other 11 allocated to at-large teams picked by the CFP selection committee.
— Convinced that playing fewer conference games confers an advantage within a highly subjective selection process, the Big Ten won’t agree to the 5+11 format unless the SEC expands its intra-league schedule to nine games.
— That ninth game could replace one of the non-conference matchups currently under contract for each SEC team. It also would create the potential for the SEC and Big Ten to form an in-season crossover series that would delight their network partners and gobble up Saturdays for the 34 schools across both leagues.
SEC teams could have just two non-conference slots available instead of four; Big Ten teams could have two available instead of three. Across the two leagues, as many as 50 slots could vanish in any given year.
Put another way: If the CFP negotiations lead to the ninth league game, there could be significant collateral damage to Big 12 non-conference schedules.
Yes, that’s a worst-case scenario. But administrators in the Big 12, ACC and every other FBS conference are monitoring the situation.
“If the SEC goes to nine, my hunch is they’ll want out of our games,” Rossini said of ASU’s upcoming non-conference matchups. “We’re taking a wait-and-see approach.”
(Rossini added that he would love to play Pac-12 legacy schools and has spoken to UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond about scheduling a home-and-home series.)
Granted, the Sun Devils have more exposure than most Big 12 schools due to home-and-home series with Texas A&M (2026 and 2027), Florida (2028 and 2031), LSU (2029 and 2030) and Texas (2032 and 2033).
But all in all, the Big 12 has approximately 30 games under contract with SEC and Big Ten opponents over the next eight years, according to FBschedules.com, which tracks scheduling for college and professional teams.
Big 12 opponents for home-and-home series include Alabama, Oregon, Nebraska and Wisconsin, in addition to the quartet of schools set to play ASU.
Those home games provide the Big 12 with premier revenue opportunities through ticket and merchandise sales, but there are massive competitive benefits, as well. The next iteration of the CFP selection process is expected to place greater emphasis than the current approach on schedule strength and quality wins.
The Big 12’s challenge is steep enough within the 12-team model, as we saw last season in the committee’s treatment of Brigham Young.
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If the conference is stripped of dates with SEC and Big Ten opponents — not all of them, just some of them — then its pursuit of at-large bids in a given season could become exponentially more daunting.
This being college football, no issue would be complete without deep irony.
The Big 12 is pushing for the 5+11 model because, as commissioner Brett Yormark said last week, it’s “the right playoff format.
“We want to earn it on the field. We do not need a professional model. We are not the NFL. We are college football and we must act like it.”
Left unsaid (by Yormark, not by the Hotline): The conference cannot agree to any format that codifies inferiority, which would be the case if the Big Ten’s 4-4-2-2-1-3 proposal is adopted.
The damage to the Big 12’s brand would be far more significant than if the conference simply didn’t perform well enough on the field.
And yet … the same 5+11 model proposed by the Big 12 and ACC seemingly requires the SEC to add a ninth league game and, potentially, spark a chain of scheduling decisions that would result in the Big 12 missing out on the very non-conference matchups that are essential to securing at-large bids.
It’s a fraught position playing out along a treacherous path leading to an uncertain future.
And it’s the reality for Big 12 schools as they cast an eye to Birmingham and prepare for “what the SEC does.”
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